


lay me down gently

by thimble



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 19:45:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1720340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a kinder war and the stakes are much lower, but Muro-chin plays like it’s his life on the line, fights with a ferocity in his eyes that’s older than either of them, so it doesn’t feel that way.</p><p>(They've been here before.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	lay me down gently

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired heavily by [this fanart.](https://twitter.com/qhfkaxxx/status/400988175620788224/photo/1) (TW: blood)

He had a dream like this once.

(A nightmare, a terrified premonition -

a memory.)

* * *

 

"The others are leaving," he says, looking out from under his long bangs. Muro-chin nods and continues to polish his sword until it can wound even the air with a solitary swipe.

"I know. But I’m staying." He pauses and his words come out slower, so that they’re easily heard and impossible to mistake for anything else. "You’re free to go too, you know."

His voice doesn’t tremble because he’s not afraid of being alone.

He’ll be sad about it though. His eyes give him away. They’re his biggest tells, even when Muro-chin thinks he’s being clever.

Atsushi shrugs and pulls his hair back with a makeshift ribbon, torn from a piece of cloth. “All the horses are taken by now,” even if it would take little effort to steal one with his size and strength.

He’ll never say it outright. He doesn’t need to.

(Or so he thinks.)

Muro-chin smiles.

 

* * *

 

Muro-chin is smiling and his blood is all over Atsushi’s hands, staining both of their robes and the ground.

"That wasn’t so bad," he says, though he has the decency to keep quiet when Atsushi’s tears land on his cheek. The wound goes too deep; they’ve known each other too long.

(“I don’t have regrets,” Muro-chin said before he went. Atsushi can’t say he feels the same.)

 

* * *

 

When Atsushi wakes up the scene is familiar - perhaps because fate decided taking Muro-chin away once wasn’t enough, but it’s wrapped in the guise of a do-over.

"Let’s run away, Muro-chin." To the opposite direction. To where the sun rises instead of sets. To when I can see you smile yet another day. But Muro-chin has other ideas.

"Only cowards run from battle, Atsushi." His voice is sharp and hard and there’s no changing his mind. Atsushi’s hands still feel warm and slick; he can’t let it happen again.

(Only fools ruin the second chance they’re given.)

"Fine." A length of string to keep his hair from his eyes and makeshift bravado to gather strength he doesn’t have. "You’re paying for my next ten bowls of congee."

Muro-chin smiles, just a small one. Atsushi will wring the necks of anyone who comes within fifty feet of him.

 

* * *

 

Muro-chin is smiling and fifty feet wasn’t enough because it was an arrow that felled him here, a coward hiding in the trees. Atsushi watches helplessly as the life drains out of him, one pint at a time.

"Go somewhere safe." There’s a fingertip on Atsushi’s cheekbone, marking the line of a cut, intercepting the path of a teardrop. Atsushi grits his teeth against the thought of all the bowls of congee they’ll never share, the beds they’ll never sleep in.

_This is the last time I’ll get to touch you._

"If a safe place existed, I would’ve taken Muro-chin there."

(But maybe not the very last.)

 

* * *

 

On the third try Atsushi resolves to not even listen to Muro-chin’s protesting. Honor is fickle and loyalty moreso, if it didn’t concern each other. He’ll find a horse, somehow; if he can’t then he’ll haul Muro-chin over his shoulder and they’ll lay low until the skirmish is done. Muro-chin is light enough to carry.

(Lighter when the breath has left his lungs.)

But Muro-chin talks of battle as if it were a game when they’re drinking in front of a crowd, and in the nighttime, when it’s only the two of them and a bonfire, he whispers of the first person he betrayed and how he’ll pay for that mistake his whole life.

"Are you leaving with the others?" Muro-chin asks, as if he expects Atsushi to say yes. And a part of him does want to answer that, but it’s the wrong question.

_Yes, this cause isn’t worth fighting for._

_Yes, I think you are._

"Stupid." His hands curl into fists at his sides for lack of something to do, because he already tied his hair back this morning. "I’m staying if Muro-chin is." Even if that makes him stupid too.

Muro-chin smiles, and he wants to avert his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Muro-chin is smiling and this repeating scenery doesn’t make his impending loss hurt any less.

"Don’t follow me, okay?" He isn’t pretty with his eyes closed. It’s the ugliest thing Atsushi’s ever seen.

_Where else am I supposed to go?_

He kills a hundred men before one even manages to scratch him. Just a shallow cut on his cheek, intercepting the path of tears.

 

* * *

 

No more, please, he begs the gods as he looks up at the sky. It’s bluer than he’s used to, and he thinks it might be nice to stare at it with the eyes of a grasshopper, a sunflower, even a stone. Anything but the eyes he has now, that met Muro-chin’s across a battlefield and decided on the spot that he wasn’t an enemy.

He’s always known it, that’s why he never thought to say it.

_There’s something special about you._

 

* * *

 

The gods granted his wishes for at least four hundred years, and now it’s time to pay up, though there’s no way his current self remembers. It’s a kinder war and the stakes are much lower, but Muro-chin plays like it’s his life on the line, fights with a ferocity in his eyes that’s older than either of them, so it doesn’t feel that way.

It feels like Atsushi might get everything ripped from him again, so he runs at the first sign of defeat, and still Muro-chin refuses the soundness of his logic.

"Can’t you see he’s better than you?"  _Can’t you see that you don’t have to try so hard?_

Muro-smiles as his tears land on Atsushi’s cheek: somehow its impact is worse than his fist.

 

* * *

 

Muro-chin is smiling when they lose, his voice gentle as he watches Atsushi cry. Maybe he thinks he’s upset he didn’t make the last basket, but it’s not just that. Atsushi can’t explain it well. The salt on lips tastes like grief; also of relief. This isn’t his sadness to bear, but that of several lifetimes ago.

_Just once, I wanted to make you win._

It’s different now, though. Their fingers touch as Muro-chin passes a Maibou between them.

(And they’ll touch again tomorrow.)


End file.
